Let me recap this whole thing. This new bill will force Americans to purchase health insurance under the threat of penalties. It will also provide “financial means” for household earning less than $ 88.000 a year to purchase insurance. Now let me get this straight: $ 88.000 a year means more than $ 7.000 a month. If both husband and wife have a steady work that means more than $ 3.000 per month for each of them. Around here we call it “really good money”.
Is this some kind of practical joke?
I mean, how can our European Elegant Leftist medias talk about “socialized healthcare”? This is just a colossal scam, an enormous gift to insurance companies. Sure, insurance companies will be forced to cover a few people but the vast mass will be made up by people who will be net “payers”. They’ll split up the loot with their good chum, the State, and “laugh all the way to the bank”.
Exactly how stupid are Leftists? How can they think their idol will “get tough on Wall Street” with credentials like these?
Iskra, a problem I have noticed in a few of your posts is that you are accusing your opponents of claiming cooperative organisations would necessarily be innefficient. While this may be the case, this isn’t what was being addressed, as the policy you advocated involved the government stepping in and propping the business up, something which would result in waste and inefficiency regardless of the management structure.
“An essential point in the social philosophy of interventionism is the existence of an inexhaustible fund which can be squeezed forever. The whole system of interventionism collapses when this fountain is drained off: The Santa Claus principle liquidates itself”. (Mises, ch36,2 from Human Action)
I guess you seem to miss over the information I provided you. It does not follow logically that without a state there would be no law or arbitration. Your making an assertion and assumption. Security is an economic good, just like food or shelter.
It is implied in their methods and goals. If it’s not implied then they are making an assumption that man will magically wake up and behave differently then he has been behaving over the past several thousands of years. That somehow he will change physiologically to act like an Ant or honeybee, not act like a human.
Yes but we can summarize most all of it as being some method of coercion or another.
The problem with your thesis is that they do happen without regulation.
Perhaps you didn’t account for that when you wrote that. [:)] If there is any regulation involved in an industry all that occurs is an imposition of artificial scarcity, a rise in prices, and restriction of demand. Which is exactly whats going on in the HC industry.
Look you call me utopian but I am simply basing all of this information from reality, facts, and logic. It’s like calling me utopian because I think the world is round…
All valuation is subjective. Again here is another one of those examples of where you refuse to acknowledge reality and the natural order of things. I do not know if it’s deliberate or simply that you have not yet taken the time to learn about it.
Have you done any research in Public choice theory? Are you aware of what rational ignorance is? How would that issue be resolved in a democraticaly run business.
Returning briefly to health care, I am wondering if anyone can help me with the following:
I’ve seen this argument used several times, but I don’t see how it results in anything other than lower individual premiums (with the ridiculous assumption that demand for insured services will not increase, of course). What effect does this have on the actual costs of health care? Does a physician charge less? Does the price of a CT scan fall? It seems to me like this insurance argument does not address the actual costs of health care provision, merely how the costs are spread.
Or am I missing something in the statist logic?
And I also call for a new thread for the off-topic discussion. I greatly admire iskrabronstein’s civility and willingness to debate, and think we ought to properly exploit it.
But there are diminishing returns of spreading risk over larger groups. Of course, if you combine two groups of five people into one group of ten, the overall risk is reduced, because if half of everyone got sick, it could all be 4 people in group A, and 1 person in group B. Group A now can’t pay all its bills, and group B profits more than expected.
You can see how with very small groups of people, this kind of outcome is likely. Flip 10 coins, you can get 7 heads. On the other hand, if you flipped 10,000 coins, the probability of 4900-5100 heads is very very high. There’s no point combining two groups of 10,000 flips. Similarly with groups of healthcare patients.
Even if this logic were COMPLETELY WRONG, the market would have selected the optimal size of insurance firms. Larger firms would be able to offer cheaper better services than smaller firms.
Exactly. I checked pharmaceutical stocks this morning. Not a blip downward. Its a steady upward trend since obama got elected. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.
A friend of mine on facebook suggest simply expanding Medicare and Medicaid to cover everyone. She didn’t seem to care that Medicare is insolvent. It’s like arguing with a brick wall.
